The Moon and Jupiter will make a close approach, passing within a mere 48.7 arcminutes of each other. From some parts of the world, the Moon will pass in front of Jupiter, creating a lunar occultation. The Moon will be 5 days old.
From Cambridge , the pair will become visible at around 20:43 (EST), 26° above your western horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. They will then sink towards the horizon, setting 2 hours and 51 minutes after the Sun at 23:13.
The Moon will be at mag -11.1; and Jupiter will be at mag -1.9. Both objects will lie in the constellation Leo.
They will be a little too widely separated to fit comfortably within the field of view of a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars.
At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction.
A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Jupiter around the time of closest approach is available here.
The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| The Moon | 11h16m50s | 5°02'N | Leo | -11.1 | 30'12"3 |
| Jupiter | 11h17m50s | 5°48'N | Leo | -1.9 | 32"8 |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 60° from the Sun, which is in Gemini at this time of year.
The sky on 9 Jul 2016
| The sky on 9 July 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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29% 5 days old |
All times shown in EDT.
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Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.
Related news
| 09 May 2016 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
| 06 Feb 2017 | – Jupiter enters retrograde motion |
| 07 Apr 2017 | – Jupiter at opposition |
| 09 Jun 2017 | – Jupiter ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009.